It’s sad to say, but most Americans are informed on current events through television news reports that are intrinsically superficial in nature. As a result, opinions are often formed through emotional reactions to images, as opposed to thoughtful consideration and discussion of underlying issues.
Take, for example, this week’s increase in Iraqi resistance to the U.S.-led coalition. Television news reports show graphic images of the fighting and the casualities, but rarely explores the underlying political struggles that are at the root of the violence.
In this op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal ($), Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist and currently a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, provides an excellent overview of the political conflicts that are causing the current uptick in violence in Iraq. The entire piece is a must read, and here are a few of Mr. Gerecht’s pertinent points:
The dogged violence in the Sunni areas of Iraq since early summer has fortified the impression throughout the Shiite community that the historic Sunni will to power did not end with the fall of Saddam Hussein and the collapse of the Baath Party. Privately, if not publicly, senior Shiite clerics [including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country’s pre-eminent Shiite divine] are thankful that the Americans have persevered in their country. Shiites are, however, also uneasy and embarrassed by America’s occupation, by the need for American protection. It is enormously difficult for the Shiite clergy, which has a profound sense of being the country’s most steadfast defender against both foreign and domestic enemies, to be beholden to Americans (and their former British overlords). It is difficult to forgive the Americans for the “betrayal” — the ugly word in Arabic is khiyana — in 1991, when George H.W. Bush encouraged Iraqis to rise up, the Shiites did, and Saddam slaughtered them by the tens of thousands while U.S. aircraft flew overhead.
Mr. Gerecht then explains how Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite cleric who is leading most of the current Iraqi resistance, fits into the picture:
Muqtada al-Sadr is an unaccomplished young cleric who has no chance to prosper through the normal channels of scholarly advancement. Like Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, he intends to shake, if not destroy, the traditional establishment so that explicitly political clerics, who are more fond of street power than of Islamic law, can become the de facto rulers of Iraq. He and his followers need chaos to thrive. They are gambling that they can spark the propensity for violence in Iraqi society and produce a chain reaction that Ayatollah Sistani cannot stop. Ideally, the Grand Ayatollah will have no choice but to join the ranks of the young firebrand. What charisma Sadr possesses derives in great part from his ability to encourage such violence and survive. And his allure has grown enormously owing to American incompetence.
By early fall 2003, it was perfectly clear to the Shiite clergy, as well as to the Pentagon, that Sadr had been complicitous in the death of American soldiers, yet the CPA did not seize him. All Iraqis, particularly the traditional clergy, know that Sadr has an awe-inspiring bloodline — his uncle Baqir al-Sadr, murdered by Saddam in 1980, was one of the great radical Shiite clerics of the 20th century; and Muqtada’s father, Sadiq al-Sadr, was a relatively inconsequential cleric, once favored by Saddam, who, as he rose, bravely challenged the dictator until he, too, was assassinated in 1999. America’s early inaction against Sadr has made it much more difficult for the traditional clergy to dismiss him as an uneducated and thuggish son of a noble family.
Then, he addresses the key political problem within Iraq:
Sadr has played on a growing perception in the Shiite community that the Transitional Administrative Law — the interim constitution that will, in theory, guide Iraqi politics until a final constitution can be written in an elected constituent assembly — is an unfair and unworkable document. Americans and highly Westernized Iraqis are proud of the Law’s guarantees for individual, especially, women’s rights. However, it cedes authority over any future constitution to “two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates,” who have the power to veto a final document. This means the Kurds, who are likely to vote as a bloc, have essentially complete control over the future shape of any Iraqi democracy.
For Ayatollah Sistani, and probably for most Shiites, this grants the Kurds, for whom the Shiites have until now borne no ill will, too much power. The Kurds, who are 20% of the population and have been brutalized for decades by Sunni Arab regimes, of course don’t see it that way. Shiite objections, which are unlikely to go away, will be a serious challenge for the CPA, which desperately wants to believe that it currently has a workable blueprint for a transitional Iraqi government. Quite understandably, it has no desire to open up the Administrative Law to a rewrite, particularly since Iraq has become more volatile, and agreement among Iraqis could even be more difficult to achieve than before.
However, we all need to understand the risk the U.S. is running by refusing to have a more open, public debate in Iraq about the transitional constitution and government. If the Shiites have the impression that they are once again being cheated of an effective democratic majority, then it is entirely possible that the consensus among Shiites about America’s beneficial presence in their country could quickly end. Sadr’s argument to his flock — that military force is the best way to ensure a Shiite victory — could start to look very appealing.
Finally, Mr. Geracht sees as the solution to the current violence:
Muqtada al-Sadr’s guerrilla attacks are a wake-up call for both the Americans and Ayatollah Sistani. The Americans need to crush Sadr’s al-Mahdi army; Sistani needs to ensure he has control in Najaf. And then both parties, plus the Arab Sunnis and the Kurds, need publicly to discuss again, however acrimoniously, the Transitional Administrative Law. The transfer of Iraqi sovereignty on June 30 could be a meaningless day if the Shiites see it as a step backward from democracy.
With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that former President Bush’s decision in 1991 to abandon support for the anti-Saddam forces within Iraq was an unfortunate error. We are now paying the political and military price for that mistake in our current effort to stabilize Iraq. That should make our resolve to succeed greater amid our recognition that it is never easy to bring the relative grace of consensual government to people who have known only brutal repression over the past generation.
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